Tag: The Hub

Another hotel is coming to City Centre. On Monday, council gave third reading / preliminary approval to a proposed 30-storey mixed-use hotel, condo, and commercial building at the corner of King George Blvd and 98th Ave. Branded as a Hampton by Hilton, the hotel will occupy the building’s 6-storey podium, along with ground level commercial space including a wine bar. Above the podium will be amenity space on the 7th floor, and a residential tower rising to 30 floors. In total, the building will consist of:

181 residential dwelling units

112 hotel rooms

8 two-storey ground oriented townhouses

133 square metres (1,432 sq. ft.) of ground-level commercial space

Designed by Architecture 49, the building features a unique form and massing, high-quality architectural design features, with substantial glazing and a high quality material palette, including an abstract pixelated image of a British Columbia landscape on the podium’s curtain wall glass.

When complete in 2020, the hotel will become City Centre’s second hotel offering an alternative to the upscale 5-star Marriott Autograph Collection – Civic Hotel, which is scheduled to open in November 2017. It will serve the growing nearby medical / technology district known as Innovation Boulevard as well as the needs of other business and personal travellers to the area.

The building will be located directly across from PCI Group’s The Hub at King George project ‘Phase B’, which is expected to begin construction on its 3 towers around the same time as construction would begin on the hotel project in 2018.

‘Phase B’ of PCI Group’s ‘The Hub’ at King George Station is returning to Council on Monday June 12. This 2nd phase of the eventual 4-phase project was initially approved back in 2014 under a previous application, but did not proceed to construction. One of the reasons for this was the need for a road adjustment on the site to accommodate the future LRT station along King George Blvd outside the existing Coast Capital Savings building (Phase A of the project). As a result, the road constructed as part of Phase A will be re-constructed further south to allow more space for the LRT station to the north. With this road adjustment has also come a re-design of the project as a whole. While the concept is generally still the same, the architecture has changed substantially, and the project has grown from 2 towers (as part of Phase B) to 3.

Details of Phase B now include:

A 15-storey office tower (137,084 sq.ft.) at the new intersection of 98A & KGB

A 40-storey condo tower (434 units) at Fraser Hwy & KGB

A 29-storey condo tower (302 units) at Fraser Hwy & 137 St

A 112,535-sq.ft. single-storey retail podium consisting of two large format retailers (a grocery store and a drug store) and a number of smaller format CRU’s.

A stand-alone 9,376-sq.ft. 2-storey restaurant south of the Coast Capital Building.

An expanded plaza the heart of the project, which will allow for retailers, such as the grocery store and restaurants to spill out onto with displays and seating to animate the space. The plaza aligns with the Coast Capital Community Plaza to the north.

Further architectural details include:

The 40-storey tower is proposed to be accentuated with a “ribbon” punctuated feature cladding on the west and east façades, with a canopy linkage that will architecturally and physically connect each tower and provide an overhead trellis wrapping over an amenity space at each tower’s rooftop.

The 29-storey residential tower is proposed as a “complementary tower” and will express the same architectural vocabulary as the taller tower at a reduced vertical scale.

Both residential towers are defined by contrasting major elements: refined high performance curtain wall glazing and linear projected balconies providing solar shading and glare reduction to the south, while the west and east ends are distinguished from the curtain wall with the “ribbon” feature punctuated façade with recessed balconies.

The proposed material palette is broken up to create distinctive buildings on the site.

Proposed Public Art:

2 locations for public art have been identified. One art installation will be located within the plaza, fronting 98B Avenue and the other art installation will be within the traffic circle of 98B Avenue / 137 Street.

Project plans and elevations:

Noticeably missing in the re-designed project is the Movie Theatre that was initially proposed under the 2014 application. It is expected that Phase B will begin construction in 2018 and be completed in 2021.

PCI Group has submitted a new application for the second phase of their four-phase mixed-use ‘The Hub’ development at King George Station, indicating that the project may finally be moving forward. Details of the application available so far indicate that Phase B will include approximately 120,000 sq.ft. of retail space, 9,000 sq.ft. of restaurant space, a 15-storey office tower, and 736 residential units within 2 towers. This description is a bit misleading however, as the office tower will actually form the base of one of the residential towers combining to make up a total 39-storey signature tower at the corner of King George Blvd and Fraser Hwy. The second tower is to be a 12-storey mid-rise rental residential building fronting Fraser Highway.

This latest application is an amendment of a previous 2014 application already in process for Phase B. Details of that application were similar, seeking a Development Permit for 2 residential towers (39 and 12 storeys), and a 13-storey office tower (base of the 39-storey residential tower), with commercial, retail, restaurants, and a cinema at ground level. The main purpose of the new amended application is to accommodate the future LRT station on site along King George Blvd, which is expected to begin construction in 2018. Phase A of the project, completed back in 2015, included the iconic 10-storey Coast Capital Savings headquarters building.

The recently completed Phase 1 of PCI Group’s The HUB at King George Station. Designed by MCM Partnership Architects, this striking building brings new energy to the area south of King George Station, and is home to Coast Capital Savings new Headquarters.